Email and Commercial Correspondence: A Guide to Professional English

170 Pages·2014·2.28 MB·English

by  Adrian Wallwork (auth.)

Guides to Professional English
Series Editor:
Adrian Wallwork
Pisa, Italy
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/13345
Adrian Wallwork
Email and Commercial
Correspondence
A Guide to Professional English
1 3
Adrian Wallwork
Pisa
Italy
ISBN 978-1-4939-0634-5 ISBN 978-1-4939-0635-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4939-0635-2
Springer New York Heidelberg Dordrecht London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014939610
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Introduction for the reader
Who is this book for?
If you write emails and letters as part of your work, then this book is for
you - particularly if you are a non-native speaker of English. By applying the
suggested guidelines, you will stand a much greater chance of getting the
desired reply to your emails in the shortest time possible.
I hope that other trainers like myself in Business English will also find the
book a source of useful ideas to pass on to students.
This book is NOT for academics. Instead, read chapters 1–6 of English for
Academic Correspondence and Socializing (Springer Science), from which
some of the subsections in this book are taken or adapted.
Is this a book of the rules of email or just a guide?
It is only a guide.
It is based on 20 years of my own personal emailing experiences plus
courses that I have held over the last 10 years at IT companies and
research centers. They are ideas that my clients have found useful and
which have significantly improved their relationships with the recipients of
their emails.
I suggest you try out the various strategies outlined in this book: if they
work for you, great. If they don’t, then try another strategy. There is no one
way that is guaranteed to be 100% effective.
What will I learn from this book?
Some of the key guidelines that you will learn from this book are:
• Write meaningful subject lines - otherwise recipients may not even open
your mail.
• Always put the most important point in the first line - otherwise the reader
may not read it.
• Never translate typical phrases literally - learn equivalent phrases.
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• Be concise and only mention what is truly relevant. Write the minimum
amount possible - you will also make fewer mistakes!
• Be a little too formal than too informal - you don’t want to offend anyone.
• If you have two long important things to say, say them in separate emails.
• Give clear instructions and reasonable deadlines.
• Put in bold the most important thing you want recipients to read - then at
least if they read the bold part and nothing else, you will still obtain what
you wanted.
• If you need people to cooperate with you, you have to think of the benefits
for them of cooperating with you.
• Empathize with your recipient’s busy workload.
• Always be polite - and remember if there is a minimal chance that your
reader will misinterpret or be offended then you can be sure he / she will.
Never adopt an angry or super-authoritative tone. Saying ‘please’ is not
enough.
How is the book organized?
Chapters 1–4 tell you how to organize an effective email from the subject
line, initial salutation, body of the text, and final salutation.
Chapters 5–7 suggest ways for making requests and chasing people
who have failed to do what you requested, and Chapter 8 deals with
commenting on other people’s work.
Chapters 9–12 focus on stylistic elements of writing emails: punctuation,
formality as well as using a soft indirect style.
Chapter 12 deals with attachments.
Chapter 13 outlines the main differences between an email and a business
letter.
Chapter 14 suggests ways to organize your emails and letters, avoid
ambiguity, and make fewer mistakes from an English language point of view.
Chapter 15 is for fun only and lists typical abbreviations, acronyms and
smileys.
The final two chapters list useful phrases for all types of emails (Chapter
16) and commercial letters and emails (Chapter 17).
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How should I use the table of contents?
The table of contents lists each subsection contained within a chapter. You
can use the titles of these subsections not only to find what you want but
also as a summary for each chapter.
Other books in this series
There are currently five other books in this Guides to Professional English
series.
CVs, Resumes, and LinkedIn
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4939-0646-8/
User Guides Manuals, and Technical Writing
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4939-0640-6/
Meetings, Negotiations, and Socializing
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4939-0631-4/
Presentations, Demos, and Training Sessions
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4939-0643-7/
Telephone and Helpdesk Skills
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4939-0637-6/
All the above books are intended for people working in industry rather
than academia. The only exception is CVs, Resumes, Cover Letters and
LinkedIn, which is aimed at both people in industry and academia.
There is also a parallel series of books covering similar skills for those in
academia:
English for Presentations at International Conferences
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4419-6590-5/
English for Writing Research Papers
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4419-7921-6/
English for Academic Correspondence and Socializing
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4419-9400-4/
English for Research: Usage, Style, and Grammar
http://www.springer.com/978-1-4614-1592-3/
INTRODUCTION FOR THE TEACHER /
TRAINER
Teaching Business English
I had two main targets when writing this book:
• non-native speakers (business, sales technical)
• Business English teachers and trainers
My teaching career initially started in general English but I soon moved
into Business English, which I found was much more focused and where
I could quickly see real results. The strategies I teach are almost totally
language-independent, and many of my ‘students’ follow my guidelines
when writing and presenting in their own language. I am sure you will have
found the same in your lessons too.
Typically, my lessons cover how to:
1. write emails
2. make presentations and demos
3. participate in meetings
4. make phone calls
5. socialize
This book is a personal collection of ideas picked up since the advent
of email. It is not intended as a course book, there are plenty of these
already. It is more like a reference manual.
I also teach academics how to present their work. In fact, some of the
chapters in this book are based on chapters from English for Academic
Correspondence and Socializing (Springer).
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How to teach email writing
I suggest you adopt the following strategy.
First, get your students to send you collections of around 10 emails that
they typically write (and receive). Before they send them to you they
should obviously delete any confidential information regarding their
company. Make sure they also include subject lines.
Read through the collections of emails and convert them all into one
Microsoft Word (or equivalent) document. Having the email examples in
Word will enable you to revise them using Track Changes during class (i.e.
with your laptop connected to a bigger screen so that students can see
clearly).
In your first lesson on email, have a general discussion on:
• how they choose their email address and what effect they think this has
on recipients (Chapter 1)
• how much time your students spend on writing and dealing with emails
• whether they write emails from scratch or use Google Translate
• how much effort they make to ensure their emails are well constructed
and in perfect English; and compare this level of effort with the effort they
make when writing in their own language
• how formal / informal (Chapter 11) their email correspondence is and how
it differs from a business letter (Chapter 13)
• what they think are the qualities of a good email
• what useful phrases (Chapters 16 and 17) they know, and whether they
have made their own personal collections of such phrases
In the next lesson, focus on subject lines (read Chapter 2 in this book while
preparing for your lesson). Collect 10-20 subject lines, then in the lesson
get students to decide which ones are effective and why. They can then
improve the ones that they think are less effective.
Then move on to salutations (Chapters 3 and 4), using the same strategy
as with subject lines.
Now you will need to turn to the main body of the email. Most emails consist
of either making requests (Chapter 5) or replying to them (Chapter 6).
When your students have mastered the basics of email writing (Chapters
1–6, 10–13), with more advanced students you can then deal with difficult
emails: chasing people (Chapter 7) and criticizing (Chapters 8 and 9).
To discuss how to organize an email, use Chapter 14, which also covers
avoiding ambiguity and English language mistakes.
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You can have some fun by showing them how English can be used in
weird and wonderful ways - see Chapter 15 (on text messaging style and
smileys).
When you are preparing each lesson, make sure you find examples from
your students' own emails, i.e. the ones that you collected in the first stage
of preparing your email course. You can also create a variety of exercises
using their emails, for example on grammar, useful phrases, and level of
formality.
Finally, get involved with the company / companies where you teach. You
will find your work much more satisfying